It Came Just the Same
by salt-rose
Summary: It's Christmas, and Draco Malfoy is about to discover that, for better or worse, some things are inevitable. Written for the DG Ficmas. DracoGinny Completed
1. Chapter 1: Now

The thing is: Draco is married now. Athene is tall and dark and thin. She smiles properly, full on and with a lifetime of ease, at cameras. She remembers the names of all his VPs at the company, and she's even thought of a few of the ideas behind some of the newer potions they pushed through the idiotically complex regulations system the Ministry has set up after the war. She has a look of careful blankness whenever people bring up Draco's past, and she has obviously decided to institute a policy of touching him whenever people mention the name Weasley, especially Ginevra. It is the only time she ever touches him, and perhaps if Draco wanted to, he would lean a bit into it, since it's the only physical contact he has nowadays. But he doesn't, because Athene is perfectly serviceable, but that is all.


	2. Chapter 2: Then

He saw her for the first time since Hogwarts at a meeting of the Order of the Phoenix.

It was the first meeting he had attended since he realized that joining Dumbledore and Harry Potter and their do-gooders was probably a smart idea, because they were going to win. He liked to think of himself as a opportunist ("Malfoys always win, Draco," his father had been fond of telling him, "I don't care how, but we always win. Take care you remember that."), but part of the back of his mind knew it was because he didn't particularly want to live in a world ruled by men like Crabbe and Goyle who liked to think of themselves as evil and then sought to prove it by kicking puppies and Muggles and snickering. So he'd come to Hogwarts one day and rather classily—he thought—thrown himself on Dumbledore's mercy and offered to "continue where Professor Snape left off, sir." He had done so ever since.

But he hadn't attended any meetings yet. It was decidedly not a good idea for a Death Eater as prominent and noticeable as Draco Malfoy, son of the late Lucius Malfoy, to be seen with any of these people or to be missing from Lord Voldemort's service for too long, and Draco had no intention of compromising his position as Snape had done. Such compromises tended to have rather fatal consequences.

However, he was still a minion of sorts, and Dumbledore had specially requested it in his last letter. "We are planning an attack on the main base soon," he wrote, "and given your familiarity with it, I need you at our next meeting to answer questions and help with strategy." Draco had incinerated the message with a well-placed spell and pouted privately in his accustomed manner, but in the end, he had gone, of course.

He hadn't expected a warm welcome from the few members he knew, and he hadn't received one. When he came in, all conversation stopped, and everyone in the room seemed to avert their eyes. He smiled a bit bitterly, looking around and thinking, "Hypocrites," in an unimpressed corner of his mind. They weren't above taking information from him, but they were above talking to him.

She was there, sitting in the back of the room, a bit away from the others, and when he looked at her, she was the only one not looking away. Instead, she pushed her long, red hair out of her eyes and smiled up at him invitingly, slow but steady. When the meeting started, he took a seat next to her and fought the urge to ask her out to lunch or dinner or anything the entire time.


	3. Chapter 3: Now

Athene is everything that Ginny is not, and Draco possesses enough self-knowledge not to insult his own intelligence by pretending it wasn't deliberate. They lost Louis, and then he lost Ginny, and he retaliated the only way he knew how: by lashing back. Spying for Dumbledore, Potter, and their cronies during the war hadn't made him a better person; it had merely made him choose his enemies and their weaknesses better.

Athene doesn't sleep in his bed. She doesn't even, usually, live in the same house as he does. They'd talked about it before they married, in a perfectly civil, perfectly sterile conversation in which Draco had told her that he needed to be married for the extra credibility it would lend his name and that he didn't want children. Ever. It's not the worst lie he's ever told her. If Athene cared at all, perhaps he would care more. Instead, she had smiled rather coldly and said that suited her fine, and she would need an allowance of at least a thousand galleons per annum, and she would keep her lovers discreet. It usually amuses him in a twisted way that they look for the same things in their women: red hair and an unquenchable zest for living.


	4. Chapter 4: Then

Ginny liked dancing. It was one of the few things he'd found out about her through their limited contact during the war. From time to time, he was told to make contact with her, and she'd always had the same slow, sweet smile for him, coupled with a sharp wit and acid tongue. So he tried to make it interesting. "Ten new recruits here," he'd written one September. "Guards doubled around eastern perimeter. Goyle trying to do crosswords but failing miserably, as can't spell. Favorite Weird sister? –D" As he encoded the scrolls, he always wondered what she thought of his very obvious attempts to make conversation.

Or sometimes they'd talk in person, and he'd tell her everything he knew about the spells the researchers were working on, and whenever he paused for breath, she'd answer all the questions his letters had asked and put a hand on his cheek and murmur a healing spell under her breath, then smile up at him. She told him about Christmas at her family home and playing pranks on her twin brothers and taught him some of the slightly ridiculous but vicious hexes she knew, like that Bat Bogey one from long ago, one of the few things he remembered about her from school.

Sometimes, she'd scold him for taking unnecessary risks, and once in a while she'd yell at him after a meeting if he'd been particularly short-tempered or antagonized Potter more than necessary.

"Are you seeing anyone?" he'd asked rather cockily after a rendezvous in late August to deliver maps of new holding cells as he helped her into her coat.

She'd actually giggled and had the temerity to kiss him on the cheek. "Wait till the war's over, Don Juan."

So he worked, and he waited.


	5. Chapter 5: Now

It is Christmas now. Draco always liked Christmas. Christmas when he was younger meant everything he'd wanted, and numerous things that he hadn't know he'd wanted. Christmas for a few years after that meant wondering if he'd be alive until the next Christmas and then berating himself for his morbid thoughts and drinking a toast with friends or enemies or by himself to still being there at all. Then for four years of his life, Christmas meant parting with less money on presents, spending more time in bed, and looking at more Muggle lights in London than he ever had before. It meant red hair and blazing rows that resulted in shoes being thrown and people yelling and once oh God someone falling down a set of stairs, but Draco doesn't think about it ever ever ever. After that, he's never allowed himself to think about Christmas, because Ginny was gone before the next Christmas.


	6. Chapter 6: Then

"Weasley."

She'd looked up from a stack of paperwork in a tiny little cubicle hidden somewhere in the Ministry of Magic. Draco despaired of ever finding his way back outside again.

"Draco!" And her face had lit up like a Christmas tree, and suddenly Draco was five years old again and fought the urge to beam.

"It's the end of the war," he reminded her, distracted by a strand of hair that fell into her eyes. He reached out a hand to push it behind her ears, and she caught it with one of her own and held it against her cheek, smooth and cool against his warm fingers.

"No," she said with a smile. "I'm not seeing anyone."

"My, you're easy."

"Do you honestly think I would have fallen for it if you said you were here for anything else?"

"No, you're far too smart for that."

"So where are you taking me for our first date?"

They'd gone out to dinner at Nox, even though she'd insisted that her work clothes weren't nice enough. He'd leered a bit in a melodramatic fashion, and she'd slapped his hands away. But when they met up later to go dancing at some club in Muggle London, he noticed how short her blue skirt was and how she smiled every time he gazed at her long, long legs.


	7. Chapter 7: Now

Draco is in the Manor now. He is in his father's old office, which he hardly ever goes into unless he wants to feel morose and self-pitying, and the fire only reaches halfway across the room, which is not uncommon for the malicious old house. Draco tries to spend most of his time in only the newer wings of the house where the numerous Dark Arts spells that have been cast in and on the house haven't had time to seep into the stones yet. There are times when Draco wonders if someone once cast something on them to make them not just lurking and bizarre and evil but also melodramatic.

This is not one of those times.

This is, instead, a drinking-twenty-four-year-old-scotch time. There is a letter in his hand that is slippery from all the charms that have been placed on it to preserve it for the past ten years. Next to his right elbow, on the corner of the desk, there is a wooden box with something in it that could immediately get him twenty to thirty years in Azkaban, no questions asked, just for possession. Draco will sit here for a long time and look at the door absently and think rather harder than he usually does, which is difficult.

The part of his mind that's trying to convince him that he is not brooding over a woman who left him a decade ago and who, if he had asked for it, would never have never given him a moment of her time since is instead congratulating himself on burning the wreath his house elves were just trying to hang on the front door. It's an appealing cliché: Draco Malfoy, king of the Slytherins, Christmas hater extraordinaire. But the truth is that he doesn't _like_ disliking Christmas. He doesn't like not hanging up mistletoe and doesn't like not having someone there with him who always knows just what to buy him for Christmas or how to whisper erotic nonsense into his ear until he's a puddle of lust just from her voice, and he doesn't like what she turned him into all those years ago by refusing what he was trying so desperately to give. He would be a fool not to realize that he is the reason the newspaper finally threw up its collective hands and told her to go wherever she wanted to because she was going to do it anyhow and it wasn't their problem if she got killed doing it, but for Merlin's sake, next time won't she at least check in from to time to let them know she's been getting the owls, especially when she's planning on showing up in the middle of Neo-Death Eater meetings. He knows this because Colin Creevey has decided that Draco is the perfect person to discuss these things with whenever they see each other at functions. Never mind that Draco never gave him the time of day during school. Or that the last thing he wants to think about is a redheaded reporter with a death wish and a list of broken hearts behind her.

No, apparently Draco Malfoy is so pathetic that he doesn't need to keep tabs on the only woman he's ever loved because he's so obvious that everyone else will do it for him.


	8. Chapter 8: Then

The first time he took her to bed was after their third date.

Took her to bed was not the right terminology, if one thought about it. He'd pushed her up against the heavy door to her flat, hands tangled in her silky hair, kissing her as if it were more necessary than breathing. And perhaps it was. She tasted like the desert they'd had for dinner, some strange but delicious confection make with strawberries and cream and sugar, and winter coolness and something else that he'd already discovered was Ginny Weasley and that made him want to stay leaning against her forever.

When he pulled back, her hazel eyes were wide and dilated in the dark, and her freckles stood out clearly across her nose, even through her flush. Their uneven breaths were loud in the quiet landing.

He untangled his hands from beneath the back of her shirt and patted all her clothing back into place. Kissing her lightly on her mouth, lips closed against the infinite softness of hers, he stepped away, and she smiled gently. "Such a gentleman, Draco," she teased. And then she was pressing herself against him and scraping her teeth down his ear, murmuring, "What if I don't want you to be a gentleman?"

He managed to gasp out, "Invite me inside."

"Yes."


	9. Chapter 9: Now

He hates her for what she's done to him.

He hates her for what she's done to herself. The bitter fucking twisted part of Draco likes it (the part his father would have approved of, although Lucius by and large approved of everything, because that is the Malfoy way with heirs), likes that she's never gotten over him as much as he's never gotten over her. It doesn't make the fact that she never looked back any easier to deal with, though.

A sharp rapping on his office door disturbs his thoughts. It cannot be one of the elves, since they would just come directly in, and he carefully takes his head out of his hands and smoothes down the unruly strands, making a mental note to destroy whichever of the house elves allowed a guest into his house and then his office unannounced.

"Come in," he barks reflexively.

Harry Potter is standing in the doorway, looking as ill at ease as ever, though Draco knows by now that it is because of Potter himself and not the company. Draco nods that he can enter because Potter is one of the few people he can actually speak to anymore, probably because Potter is one of the few people actually more fucked up than he is.


	10. Chapter 10: Then

Draco's never remembered more of the day she moved in than the sight of the front hall of Malfoy Manor swamped with boxes upon boxes.

"All this from the woman who insisted she didn't have more that three pairs of shoes," he said in mock amazement.

She grinned unrepentantly and snaked a hand up around his neck. "I lied."

"That's awfully Slytherin of you."

"Mmm," she murmured against his lips. "Let the house elves unpack, and come take it out of my hide."

"With pleasure." But he'd gotten a little perverse sense of satisfaction from making love to her in a broom closet instead of in a bedroom. After all, he wasn't about to encourage her behavior.

Though he'd buy her an entire new wardrobe if she kept scraping her nails down his back and moaning breathily like that.


	11. Chapter 11: Now

Potter's gaze falls unerringly on the box, eyes widening a little, and Draco mentally snarls that drunkards ought to at least attempt a little less awareness of their surroundings in order to preserve the image. But Draco won't let himself resent Potter's neuroses because they have saved his life more times than he cares to recount.

Potter meets his eyes and immediately says, "You're an idiot, Malfoy," and takes a seat on one of the heavy mahogany chairs on the opposite side of his desk. His words are slow and a bit slurred, and if the straggly beginnings of a beard on his face are anything to go by, he has not done anything but indulge in days. His bitter, alcoholic smell supports the theory.

Draco had long ago decided that tact was not one of the Good Guys' defining characteristics. Ron Weasley certainly taught him that much (though he'd always had vaguely higher standards for Potter, but then, hadn't everyone?). However, this does not excuse a similar lack of common decency and politeness in Draco himself until further into the conversation and the bottle of scotch. He settles for raising an eyebrow and saying, "Excuse me?" the same way he would say, "Please fuck off, you prat."

Potter's words are too slow, carefully shaped in his mouth before they are uttered to keep from slurring them, but his intent is perfectly clear. "You're really going to. Malfoy, you're an idiot. There is idiotic, and then there is this."

Draco does not know what the generally accepted response to this speech is. All that he knows is that he's not terribly interested in sitting here with his arch nemesis turned cautious ally turned jaded drinking partner and listening to why he, Draco Malfoy, owner of Malfoy Magical Potions, Ltd., the second wealthiest individual in England after that muggle Queen, latest in a long a glorious line of Malfoy heirs, should listen to the Boy-Who-Lived-To-Become-A-Has-Been for life advice. He tries and fails to remember the last time he or anyone else saw Potter outside of Malfoy Manor, Harry's dismal excuse for a flat, that horrible pub Harry insists on frequenting, or a Hogswart reunion.

"Did anyone say I had any intension of using it?" he asks. His tone clearly states, "Shut the hell up." He's very successful at channeling it on most occasions, and it has been known to make four research assistants, two clerks, and, in a rather memorable moment, one Daily Prophet photographer cry.

Unfortunately, Potter has faced down Lord Voldemort, and it seems one Draco Malfoy holds little terror for him. He gives Draco his patented I-am-Harry-Potter-and-I-can-assure-you-that-you-don't-want-to-do-this stare, which would be more effective if he hadn't been swaying _while seated in his chair_.


	12. Chapter 12: Then

"Draco."

He looked up, rather grateful for the excuse to forget about the rest of the preparation he has to do for the meeting tomorrow with the Ministry Trade Commission, as Ginny slipped around the room to sit on the desk in front of him. She was dressed in one of his school shirts that had mysteriously managed to survive to the present day. It hung down to the middle of her thighs, and when she parted her legs slightly to let him step between them and twine his arms around her, he could see the barest hint of green knickers. He took a moment to think about how good she looked in his clothes, on the desk, in this house.

"My love?" He nuzzled her neck absently, and she shivered.

"Draco."

"Mmm."

She pushed him away from her for a moment. "Draco, this is serious." When he tried to move towards her again, she put a hand firmly in the middle of his chest and held him off. He sighed in resignation and gave her a look that said he was listening but clearly they could be doing more interesting things than talking, like wrinkling all the scrolls on his desk for tomorrow. She had her nose scrunched up as she usually did when she was thinking too hard, so he did try for a least a moment or two to regain control of his libido.

"What do you think of maternity robes?"

Draco blinked in surprise. "Hypothetically? Or as a wardrobe choice? Because I think you look better in this," and he leaned into her and pinned both her arms behind her back, gently scraping his teeth along the underside of her jaw, running his tongue down the firm line.

"I was thinking—mmm—as more of, um, a—a lifestyle choice," she finished breathlessly.

He froze. "Do you mean…?"

She looked nervous and hesitant all of a sudden, but her nod was all Ginny, decisive and challenging and only slightly vulnerable. "Are you, um…fine with this?"

He proceeded to show her exactly how fine he was on his desk. And then in their bedroom. And finally, somehow (the details were quite lost to him), on top of the dining room table.


	13. Chapter 13: Now

"Look," Draco says rather reasonably, "I am merely preserving my options."

"By getting hold of an _illegal timeturner_!" Potter all but shouts.

Draco replies stiffly, "Look, Potter, I don't expect you with all your nice Gryffindor sensibilities to understand, but—"

"I understand plenty!" Potter retorts angrily. "I understand what it's like to want to change something like that, but you can't, and guess what, Malfoy? There's usually a reason that you can't. And you don't get to play God. You don't get to decide who lives and who dies. That's not how it works."

Draco sneers. "You know, it's funny, Potter, but I thought for a moment we were talking about me. But no, apparently we were talking about you, and if you think I'm going to let you take your frustrated martyr complex out on me, you have another think coming. Life happens, Potter, and sometimes people die. Your parents died. Cedric Diggory died. Hagrid died, and Longbottom died, and everyone else—I _know_ that, Potter, but I don't. Bloody. Care. You may not have the guts to do anything about it, but I do."

There is a long silence. Potter is staring at him, a vein jumping in his forehead, and Draco knows his own hands are gripping into the desk too tightly, but he can't feel them at all.

Potter's eyes lose a bit of their maniacal gleam, and now they just look soft. Defeated. Shuttered. Draco sighs. Having something resembling a conscience really, really sucks.


	14. Chapter 14: Then

"I'm not going."

Ginny spun around in the foyer, and even the billowing of her robes around her form did nothing to hide her stomach. If he weren't so angry, he would probably think something tremendously embarrassing like she'd never looked as beautiful, but instead, he was too indignant to care.

"What do you mean, you're not going?" she snapped.

"Exactly that. Your idiot brothers can make do with me quite well for at least one day, and I for one don't need to deal with their prattle all day long."

Her eyes narrowed dangerously. "You promised you'd go last time."

"Yes, but I've changed my mind." He turned around and prepared to walk back to the fireplace to floo back to the office in time for his two o'clock meeting.

"Draco Malfoy, don't you walk away from me!"

"Oh? What are you going to do about it?"

She strode purposefully toward him, and as she approached it looked dangerously as if she were about to hit him. When she was within a foot or two of him, though, she stopped, and suddenly her eyes filled with tears.

"You said you would. You promised, and—and you know how Mum's being about all this, and she's going to be even worse today, and I've been throwing up all morning, and you can't even take an afternoon to talk to my bloody _Mum_?" She was yelling again by the end.

He knew it was wrong, but it still felt good to say, "I'm sorry, Ginny. I can't." It felt good to refuse her something, and part of him was sickened by it, but the part of him that couldn't deal with Molly Weasley's recriminations and not-so-veiled comments about men who wouldn't even marry the girls they impregnated—as if it weren't Ginny's choice too, and when had anyone been able to withstand Ginny when she really pushed for somehting?—and seducers of innocent daughters—ha!—just smirked and moved his limbs until he was standing in front of the fireplace with a pinch of floo powder in his hand.


	15. Chapter 15: Now

"You're a conceited twat," Potter snaps angrily. Draco knows and is ashamed enough to do the one thing he hardly ever does.

"Look, Potter, I apologize. That was unpardonably rude and—"

The other man holds up a hand to stop the flow of words, and so Draco happily falls silent. While he knows he needs to apologize, it doesn't mean he is any more eager to do it than usual.

"If I came here for politeness, I'd have left long ago, Malfoy," Potter says without malice, and Draco is pathetically pleased to hear the tiny vein of affection in his voice.

"What are you here for, then, Potter?" he asks with a smile.

"The scotch."

There is another lull in the conversation while Potter transforms a sheet of blotting paper into a cup that comes out a strange cross between a glass and a teacup, looks askance at it, and then pours some into it anyhow. This pause is not quite comfortable, because he and Potter will never do comfortable, but it is also somehow easy. Not right, because in a right world—the type of world that Draco's decided to create—Ginny would be here, and there would be Christmas decorations around the Manor, and he would not be sitting here on Christmas Eve across from the savior of the wizarding world with a fire that was hardly burning anymore, some rather superb scotch, and a decade's worth of emptiness, but if Draco were farther gone, he'd probably admit to himself that if there were anyone in the wizarding world he would most want to be sitting here alone on Christmas Eve with, it's probably Harry bloody Potter, two sheets to the wind and all.

Finally Potter breaks the silence to say, "I just want to know why."

Draco thinks about it a long time before answering. "Because I can," he says finally. "And because ten years is a long time to regret something."

"Sometimes things have to be done the hard way, not the easy way," Potter says sharply, but he closes the door gently on his way out.

Draco stares into the fire's death throes, deep in thought once more. Finally, he reaches into the box and pulls out the timeturner. Placing it around his neck, he takes a deep breath, and then he begins to turn it over and over, the white sands rushing against one another.


	16. Chapter 16: Then

First things first, he thinks. He is standing in the foyer and has done as many cloaking and invisibility spells as he knows, over and over, until he is somewhat confident, though he is still standing in a ring of darkness near a wall. He doesn't need to stand anywhere else in order to do this; he knows in his mind exactly where he will stand, exactly where she will stand, when they come rushing down the main staircase, and he knows the angle will work. Must work.

He allows himself a few minutes to breath in, to look around him. The portrait is still hanging over the mantelpiece, where it hasn't been for years, ever since he took it off the wall, burned it, and sent her the ashes as some sort of last statement. It's by Dean Thomas, and if he were to sell it on the market, its value would be virtually limitless—an oil, Muggle-style portrait during Thomas's famous blue phase just after the ending of the war and before the Wasting curse finally killed him. In it, Ginny's red hair is so dark that it is almost black, and her profile is pale and fragile in the moonlight. Her eyes are wide and haunted, and there is a streak of blood slithering across her cheek, and still Thomas managed to capture that fire, that spirit, the way she hurts so exquisitely and holds herself together so perfectly.

Now the door is slamming open, and he is storming down the stairs, and he permits his lips to curl over the sight of himself, younger and angry and storming and helplessly in love. His robes are a flawless black velvet that swirls heavily about his ankles. The robes are still in his closet, but he hasn't worn them since.

And then she is there at the top of the staircase, and she is perfect. Her dressing gown is half open, and her eyes are sooty and glossy from tears, and just the edges of her toes peak out from beneath the gown as she somehow manages, given her girth, to run down half the long, long flight of stairs to where his younger self is standing.

"Draco. Draco, please, I didn't mean…"

"Didn't mean what?" he sneers, and God, he remembers the feeling of that, being ripped out of his throat the way she has just ripped his heart out.

The tears are falling freely down her face. "You're not like him, Draco, you're not. I know you aren't. Please, just come back upstairs, and we'll talk about this, and—"

"There's nothing to talk about."

"There is!"

"I am—_nothing_—like him," but he is turning away already, and the Draco down the stairs tenses and readies himself, wand out. He is going to do this properly.

Ginny cries out, "Draco, please wait," and there, just there, right now, she is running down the stairs after him, loose hair streaming behind her, and her fingers latch onto the edge of his sleeve and hold, but he makes a violent shrugging motion, and the fabric slips out of her fingers as the forward momentum pulls her farther down the stairs and makes her feet lose balance from under her, and now she is falling, falling—

And Draco whispers a spell to change the course of her direction just slightly, so that when she spreads her hands out to stop herself, one of them reaches his shoulder and grabs desperately, and her cry of alarm is enough to make his younger self turn around and steady her with more fear than impatience, and he looks at the panicky way his hands clutch her waist to keep her from tumbling, and he thinks, good.

So he fumbles for the leather thong around his neck and takes the timeturner, ignoring the way the Ginny in his head is still banging down the staircase like a limp rag doll, and the way her head rests in his lap as he strokes his hands down her temples and wonders how to breath, and the way the mediwitches levitate her off of the ground, and one white hand trails closer to the ground than the other, and the way that a week later, the blood will stain everything red, because right now, there on the staircase, he has one arm around her, and her head is buried against his neck.


	17. Chapter 17: Now

A sharp rapping on his office door disturbs his thoughts. It cannot be one of the elves, since they would just come directly in, and he carefully takes his head out of his hands and smoothes down the few, unruly strands, making a mental note to destroy whichever of the house elves allowed a guest into his house and then his office unannounced.

"Come in," he barks reflexively.

Hermione Granger is standing in the doorway, looking as ill at ease as ever, though Draco knows by now that it is because of the way he snaps when his brooding is disturbed and not because she doesn't want to be there. Draco nods that she can enter because Granger is one of the few people he can actually speak to anymore, probably because Granger is one of the few people who won't pretend Ginny never existed to make him feel better.

Granger's gaze falls unerringly on the box, eyes widening a little, and Draco mentally snarls that the woman Witch's Weekly called brilliant and inspirational for her three Magis Doctors ought to have more subtlety, but Draco will not resent Granger's sometimes painful gestures because she has taken Louis off his hands on more bad nights than he will admit to having.

Granger meets his eyes and immediately says, "Tell me you're not going to do it, Draco," and takes a seat on one of the heavy mahogany chairs on the opposite side of his desk. Her eyes are wide and guarded, and her hair is less controlled than he's seen it in years.

Draco pretends ignorance and avoids her gaze by looking around the room, taking in the photographs that have hung there for years now. There is Ginny from Hogwarts, and he and Ginny feeding each other pieces of wedding cake, and there are few photographs from some of Louis' birthday parties that Hermione had framed for him and insisted on hanging in his office, and more of him and Ginny, dancing at her brother's wedding, on vacation in Antigua, smiling at one another. There are no photographs of him with his son. There is a picture stashed somewhere in the Manor of Granger and Weasley holding the boy when he was first born, but he was at Ginny's bedside then, first holding her hand and talking to her as the mediwitches worked feverishly through the night, then screaming and throwing things across the room as they quietly cleaned everything. Granger had given him the picture at the wake, and while he couldn't bring himself to burn it, he also couldn't bring himself to look at it.

Granger's words are cautious and diplomatic, but her intent is perfectly clear. "I don't know that you're thinking clearly, Draco. The thing is, you mustn't do anything without considering the implications, and even then..."

"Did anyone say I had any intension of using it?" he asks. His tone clearly states, "Cease and desist at once or I will have no compulsion in making your life a living hell." The only person who can withstand the tone is his mother-in-law Molly Weasley, who has an irritating habit of raising her eyebrows while brandishing a wooden cooking spoon, and he is suddenly at a loss for words every time.

"Why else would you have an illegal timeturner?" she asks skeptically. "You forget that I had one at Hogwarts; I know exactly how difficult it is to obtain them. If you're going to go through the Ministry, you've got to take the exams and then have someone vouch for you, and that someone must have already owned one at some point, and honestly, Draco, you can't just abuse something of this magnitude for your own personal gains."

They stare each other down for a while, and finally she sighs. "Ron and I can pick up Louis and keep him for the night, if you'd like; Mathilda will be at the Christmas party too."

He nods, and she stands up. One hand on the doorknob, she turns around and looks back at him.

"Sometimes you've got to do the right thing and not the easy thing," Granger says softly, and she closes the door gently on her way out.

"I know," he whisper, but he slowly opens the box anyhow.


	18. Chapter 18: Then

He is in the bedroom. This time it took rather longer to arrange, because first he had to go back to the staircase and his nightmares and close his eyes tightly against the sight of Ginny falling, falling, and then he had to try with numb fingers to turn it over just the right number of times, but now he is here.

Ginny is writing a letter on her side of the bed, her quill scratching against the parchment, her wand's slight Lumos charm illuminating just her end table. On his side of the bed, he is still sleeping heavily. The light will not wake him.

He has thought about waking himself up now, but he's decided that it probably won't do any good, will probably just make her leave later, so instead, he waits until she finishes writing and folds the letter. He knows that her bags are already out in the hallway, since he passed them on his way upstairs, and when she disappears into the enormous closet, he moves closer to the bed. There is the faint rustling of clothing from the dressing room, and then Ginny walks out quickly, never looking at him. As soon as she closes the door, he presses the tip of his wand into his sleep self's neck, just at the pulse point.

He can see himself shudder awake violently, reflexes from the war working overtime, and Draco makes sure to step backwards so that his out flung arm will brush only air. The younger version of him blinks owlishly, coming fully awake, and running his hand in a confused way over the empty sheets beside him. Then his eyes find the letter, and he is suddenly out of bed and running down the hallway to the stairs. Draco remembers living with this fear every day and hopes that he knew what to say back then, because now he can't think of a thing. He hears voices from near the front door, and he lets whatever will happen happen.


	19. Chapter 19: Now

A sharp rapping on his office door disturbs his thoughts. It cannot be one of the elves, since they would just come directly in, and he carefully takes his head out of his hands and smoothes down the few, unruly strands, making a mental note to destroy whichever of the house elves allowed a guest into his house and then his office unannounced and after the day he's had.

"Come in," he barks reflexively, his throat scratchy, his eyes so dry he can hardly blink.

Blaise Zabini is standing in the doorway, looking ill at ease. He ought to, Draco thinks maliciously. Slytherins are ambitious and cunning and cutthroat when the occasion requires it, but they also have a fierce honor system among them. There are things that you do not do under any circumstances, and this is something that falls into that forbidden category, Draco knows, angling his eyes up and away from the photographs on his desk. He thinks about throwing Zabini out on his ear, but when the dark-haired man looks back at him without spite or pity or triumph in his eyes, he finds himself nodding instead, letting him enter. Zabini looks like Draco Malfoy with Harry Potter's hair, and if he weren't so furious (heart-broken, a soft part of him is thinking), he'd be laughing himself sick over the irony. Is that why she did it? Or did she do it because Zabini is one of the few people Draco can actually speak to anymore, one of the few people from his childhood who didn't turn their back on him when he turned his back on the Dark Lord?

Zabini's gaze falls unerringly on the photographs. There is no surprise in his eyes, but since he's here at all, Draco doesn't expect to see any. He wonders what Zabini will say to make the images of him fucking Draco's wife go away or get better. There's no getting better from this. Draco would kill him now, Azkaban and all, if a part of him didn't also know that it is as much his own fault.

He couldn't hate her enough to let her go, and he wouldn't love her enough to keep her. But God, he'd wanted to.

Zabini looks up again. "Tell me you're not going to do it, Malfoy." He doesn't sit down, choosing to remain lurking in front of the desk, looking as awkward as a Slytherin can and sorry but also—angry?

Draco remembers Zabini looking around the Slytherin common room with the same expression on his face. He remembers the two of them the summer before Hogwarts started, when Zabini spent four weeks at Malfoy Manor, sneaking into the parlor behind the chair Pansy Parkinson was seated on, right by her mother, and each pulling one of her braids. He remembers Zabini, Crabbe, Goyle, Bullstrode and himself staying up all night to drink Firewhiskey after the last day of classes seventh year. Because of this, and only because of this, Draco restrains his temper and merely says, "I don't know what you're talking about," instead of charming the bottle of scotch on his desk to slam into Zabini's temple.

Zabini doesn't take the opening Draco's left him, though. Instead, he slams his hand down on the desk. "You're really going to let her go. Make her go. God, Malfoy, you're an idiot, you know that? Yes, I fucked her. Yes, it was bloody terrific. And you know what she said directly afterwards?"

"I don't know what makes you think I would care. And if you don't mind, Zabini, it's Christmas Eve, and I really can't be arsed to deal with you, so just bugger. Off."

He looks as if he'd like nothing more than to stride around the desk and shake Draco, but fortunately for Zabini's health, he stays where he is. "She didn't say anything, Malfoy," he says tiredly. "She didn't say anything at all because she was crying too hard to talk. The only thing she managed to say was, 'It was a mistake,' over and over again."

"That doesn't change anything." The thing is, it doesn't. But it's also made the bottom drop out of Draco's world, if getting the pictures by owl this morning hadn't already done that.

Zabini sighs. "I know you don't want to see me, or hear what I have to say, or anything, and I can't say that I blame you, but Malfoy. Just think it over. Give her the chance to explain. And maybe listen to her when she tries to talk to you. You were married for nine years; she deserves at least that."

They stare each other down for a while, and finally Zabini gives in. "I'll let myself out." Draco can't help the thrill of pleasure he gets from it, and he doesn't want to help it. At all. It feels good to be this petty, because it's all he can do right now.

When he reaches the door, Zabini pauses with one hand on the doorknob, turns around, and looks back at Draco, who is pretending indifference.

"Sometimes, it's better to do the hard thing than the easy thing," he says softly.

Fuck this, Draco thinks, and charms the scotch bottle to fly across the room. Even before it shatters on the empty doorframe, he is digging through his desk, searching for the timeturner his mother left him.


	20. Chapter 20: Then

He remembered different moments in his mind as fulcrums, turning points upon which everything rested, and that made it easier. There were problems that made everything they'd done into an enormous game of if: What if he'd caught her when she fell? What if he hadn't let her go that night? What if he'd come after her once she'd gone? What if she'd never gotten that job offer, or they'd never kept that baby, or he'd never proposed to Athene? What if he told her how much he loved her every single damn day that they were together?

And the thing about the timeturner was that he could answer all those questions. He could change things, little things that would influence the way their lives moved together, and he could find out exactly what that would mean. Having few to no moral compunctions about it only made it easier. That was the beautiful thing.

But it never changed. And that hurt. So many paths, so many endings, and all of them the same. Oh, the hows and whens and whys changed every time—murder, death, adultery, a hundred and one systems of loss—but there was no present with _them_, no route he could take that would lead him to her.

As much as he hated to admit it, maybe they'd all been right, Potter, Granger, Zabini, his mother, Ginny herself, everyone who told him that he couldn't take the coward's way out, that he had to do things the long way, the hard way, go back to the beginning and do it all over again the way it had happened the first time, because that was how it was supposed to happen.

After that it was fairly simple—agonizing, horrifying, terrifying—to count out the turns of the small, golden hourglass slowly and watch the world blur.

He'd do it the hard way, this time. But that didn't mean he was going to do nothing at all.


	21. Chapter 21: Now

Potter drinks his drink slowly and carefully, and Draco just watches him. The silence stretches between them, and Draco thinks about Christmases and empty houses and full houses and how they aren't nearly as far apart as they seem.

Finally Potter breaks the silence to say, "I just want to know why."

Draco thinks about it a long time before answering. "Because I can," he says finally. "And because ten years is a long time to regret something."

"Sometimes things have to be done the hard way, not the easy way," Potter says sharply, but he closes the door gently on his way out.

Draco stares into the fire's death throes, deep in thought once more. Finally, he reaches into the box and pulls out the timeturner. He looks at it for a while.

And then he puts it back in the box.

He's going to do it the right way this time. The way, he's beginning to understand, that it was meant to be done. He will go, and he will find her, and he will tell her how much he still loves her, how much he's always loved her. After that, he doesn't know, but he can't make it through this Christmas without it. He sits behind his desk for a little while longer until the fire burns itself out, and then he gets up from his chair and leaves the room. He calls for his heavy winter cloak, and when one of the elves brings it, he dismisses her, puts it on and double-checks the warming spell for holes in the magic. Then he moves to the door and grasps the handle firmly. He opens it in a single fluid motion.

Ginny Weasley is standing on the steps leading up to the door. The snow is very white against the brilliance of her hair and the darkness of the thick, black cloak that falls heavily around her. Her face is leaner than he remembers, and her eyes are older, but she could be any of the ages and times and worlds in which he's loved her.

"Ginny," he says dumbly.

"Draco."

Then somehow she is in his arms, and her lips are cool against his, but they are pressed so closely together that even the snow can't get through. His hands are clutching at her tiny waist, and her hands are tangled desperately in his hair.

There is so much to do and say and think, but somehow, Draco knows, this just might be the best Christmas ever.


End file.
